The transfig package "Recommends: netpbm". Now I tried what happens, when I remove the netpbm package using "apt-get remove netpbm". I expected that the program would tell me that transfig still recommends this package, but apt-get simply tries to remove the package without any comment: # apt-get remove netpbm Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: netpbm The following held packages will be changed: netpbm 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 270 not upgraded. Need to get 0b of archives. After unpacking 1338kb will be freed. I think, that apt-get should tell the user that there is a recommendation like dselect does (dselect suggests removing all packages recommending the package selected for removal and it informs me about packages suggesting the package, but doesn't suggest removal).